Why I Built a Bot to Reward Open Source Contributors

Excerpt

ContriBot is tightly integrated with the public repositories I maintain. Every time someone contributes code that gets merged into the master branch, the ContriBot will ask them for their information. For example, I might ask for their address and t-shirt size for swag if the repository is related to my employer. When ContriBot receives a reply, it uses the designated alerts to let me and my team know that this person has contributed and should be rewarded in some way.

Description

A majority of open source citizens are not paid for their contributions, at least not directly. Though there are various motivations that keep us contributing, this talk is about software I built to help recognize every person who helps with the projects I manage.

ContriBot is tightly integrated with the public repositories I maintain. Every time someone contributes code that gets merged into the master branch, the ContriBot will ask them for their information. For example, I might ask for their address and t-shirt size for swag if the repository is related to my employer. When ContriBot receives a reply, it uses the designated alerts to let me and my team know that this person has contributed and should be rewarded in some way.

Naturally, ContriBot is completely open source. I’d like to see other projects deploy it on their servers and find ways to recognize their contributors. It doesn’t have to be a t-shirt, or even something physical. Using ContriBot, busy project owners can be reminded to even do something as simple as thank their fellow open source citizens.